Did You Know?
At its peak in the early 1970s, Howard Johnson's operated more than 1,000 restaurants and 500 motor lodges — making it larger than McDonald's and Burger King combined. The chain pioneered the restaurant franchise model in 1935, nearly two decades before McDonald's opened its first location.
The orange roof was the promise. You could see it from half a mile away, rising above the highway like a beacon — and if you were a child in the back seat of a 1958 Buick, it meant one thing: ice cream. Twenty-eight flavors of it, to be exact. That orange roof belonged to Howard Johnson's, and for two decades it was the most recognized landmark on the American highway.
At its peak in the early 1970s, Howard Johnson's operated more than 1,000 restaurants and 500 motor lodges across 42 states and Canada. It was the largest restaurant chain in the United States — bigger than McDonald's, bigger than Burger King, bigger than any of the fast-food upstarts that would eventually bury it. For millions of American families, a stop at HoJo's wasn't just a meal. It was a ritual.
From a $500 Debt to a National Empire
The story begins in 1925, in Wollaston, Massachusetts — a neighborhood in Quincy, just south of Boston. Howard Deering Johnson was a young man with a large debt, having inherited his late father's struggling cigar business. With $500 borrowed against that debt, he took a gamble and opened a small drugstore and soda fountain.
The store was unprofitable at first. Then Johnson had an insight that would change American dining forever: he started making his own ice cream, doubling the butterfat content of the standard recipe to create a richer, creamier product that tasted unlike anything else available. Customers noticed immediately. Within two years, his debts were paid off.
By 1929, Johnson had opened his first full-service restaurant, and he was experimenting with new menu items — including fried clams, which he initially added as something of a joke. The clams became one of the most beloved items on the menu, a signature dish that HoJo's customers would order faithfully for the next six decades.
The Franchise Revolution
The stock market crash of 1929 nearly ended the story before it began. Johnson's expansion plans collapsed, and he spent the early 1930s struggling to keep his single restaurant alive. But necessity, as always, proved to be the mother of invention.
In 1935, Johnson struck a deal with a local businessman: rebrand your restaurant as a Howard Johnson's, pay a fee, follow our standards, and sell our food. It was one of the first restaurant franchise agreements in American history. When the arrangement proved successful for both parties, others followed. By the end of the 1930s, Howard Johnson's had dozens of locations up and down the East Coast.
The timing was perfect. Americans were falling in love with the automobile, and the open road was calling. Howard Johnson's positioned itself at the intersection of those two great American passions — the car and the meal — and the result was explosive growth.
The Golden Age: Orange Roofs Across America
The 1950s were Howard Johnson's golden decade. The Interstate Highway Act of 1956 created thousands of miles of new roads, and Johnson — who had been anticipating exactly this moment — was ready. His orange-roofed restaurants appeared at highway exits across the country, each one identical to the last: the same colonial architecture, the same turquoise trim, the same Simple Simon and the Pieman weathervane on the roof. That consistency was the point. In an era before the internet, before GPS, before any of the tools we use today to evaluate an unfamiliar restaurant, the orange roof was a guarantee. You knew exactly what you were getting.
In 1954, Johnson added motor lodges to the formula, opening the first one in Savannah, Georgia. The concept was elegant in its simplicity: drive until you're tired, pull into a Howard Johnson's, eat dinner, sleep next door, have breakfast, and continue your journey. The lodges were as standardized as the restaurants — same rooms, same bedspreads, same reassuring familiarity. It was, in essence, the invention of the American road trip experience.
The Menu That Made America Hungry
The 28 flavors of ice cream were the headline, but Howard Johnson's menu was far more than dessert. The restaurants served a full American menu — clam chowder, hot dogs, grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, pot roast — at prices that families could afford. The fried clams, breaded and golden and served in a basket, became a near-religious experience for New Englanders. The frankfurters, split and griddled and served in a toasted bun, were the best on any highway in America.
But the ice cream was the soul of the place. Twenty-eight flavors at a time when most ice cream parlors offered three or four. Flavors like Burgundy Cherry, Caramel Fudge, Frozen Pudding, and the legendary Peppermint Stick. Children pressed their faces against the glass cases and agonized over the choice. Adults ordered the same flavor every time, because that's what you did at Howard Johnson's.
Watch: What Howard Johnson's Was Really Like in the 1960s
The Long Decline
The trouble began in the 1960s, when a new kind of restaurant started appearing at highway exits. McDonald's. Burger King. Wendy's. KFC. These new chains had one overwhelming advantage over Howard Johnson's: speed. While HoJo's offered table service and a full menu, the fast-food chains could put a meal in your hands in three minutes. For families in a hurry — and American families were increasingly in a hurry — that mattered.
Howard D. Johnson's son, Howard Bud Johnson, took over the business in the 1960s and struggled to find a response. Costs were rising, quality was slipping, and the orange roofs that had once seemed so welcoming were beginning to look dated. By the mid-1970s, the chain had over 1,000 restaurants but was losing ground to competitors on every front.
In 1979, Bud Johnson sold the company to the Imperial Group, a British conglomerate that had previously traded in tobacco. The new owners made a series of decisions that further damaged the brand's reputation. In 1985, they sold it again — this time to Marriott — at half the original purchase price. Marriott promptly sold off the motor lodges and converted or closed dozens of restaurants. By the time the dust settled, Howard Johnson's had just 174 locations remaining.
The 1990s brought further contraction. By 1995, only 84 restaurants were left. By 2005, the number had fallen to eight. One by one, the survivors closed their doors, until only a single location remained: the Howard Johnson's in Lake George, New York, which had been operating since 1954.
On June 1, 2022, that last restaurant closed for good. The orange roof came down. The 28 flavors were gone.
What We Lost
Howard Johnson's wasn't just a restaurant chain. It was the infrastructure of the American family vacation — the place where the road trip paused, where children got their ice cream, where parents got a moment to breathe. It was the first proof that a restaurant could be both standardized and beloved, both efficient and warm.
The fast-food chains that replaced it are faster, cheaper, and more convenient. But they never quite managed to replicate what Howard Johnson's understood instinctively: that eating on the road is an experience, not just a transaction. That a meal at the end of a long day of driving deserves something more than a bag handed through a window.
The orange roofs are gone. But if you close your eyes and think about summer road trips in the 1950s and 1960s, you can still see them — rising above the highway, promising 28 flavors and a clean room and the particular comfort of a place that felt like home even when you were a thousand miles from it.
If you love the stories of America's great lost restaurants, explore our Lost Treasures collection — or revisit the golden age of the American diner in our Soda Fountain Memories series.
